An exceptional athlete growing up …
Diane Van Deren grew up in Colorado playing a number of sports. As her bio on The North Face website notes, “she competed on boys’ baseball teams, showed her horse in local rodeos and won Colorado State Championship titles in both golf and tennis.” In fact, she became a professional tennis player after college, traveling in Europe and the United States. She later coached while raising a family, continuing to keep athletics as a part of her life.
… who suffered grand mal seizures as an adult …
When pregnant with her third child, Van Deren was diagnosed with epilepsy. She would go on to have grand mal seizures (which, as the Mayo Clinic notes, involve “a loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions”) for 10 years, with none of the medicines she was prescribed able to help her. Finally, in 1997, she had a lobectomy, a surgery that involved removing a portion of her brain in her right temporal lobe. The surgery was successful in that her seizures stopped, but because her brain was injured, she would go on to have issues with things such as short-term memory and organizational skills.
… only to become a top ultrarunner.
Instead of allowing those limitations to become obstacles in her life, Van Deren turned to running and, by 2003, was taking part in ultrarunning competitions, which is typically anything longer than a marathon. You might think she’d be a middle-of-the-pack type of runner, but as a recent Edmonton Journal article notes, for her, “first-, second- and fifth-place finishes are commonplace.” Just last year, she became the only woman to complete the Yukon Arctic Ultra Race, which is a mind-boggling 430 miles in freezing temperatures. And this past weekend, at the age of 50, she finished the Canadian Death Race (yes, that’s the official name), a nearly 80-mile race through the Canadian Rockies. She came in 31st out of 418 runners, but was the top woman in the 50-59 age group. Don’t be surprised if you find her name on the leaderboard for many years to come.
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Screengrab by mayoclinic via YouTube.